Apparently, Google is not the only search engine that you have to look out for. There’s ‘Bing’ and ‘Yahoo Search.’ But little do many people know is how YOUTUBE can drive traffic more than these last two search engines.
The majority of people nowadays prefer to watch rather than to read. Even if they got bored, they’ll go ahead and watch something online. But we can’t deny that most of the people who like to watch, go to Youtube. Because really, other than vlogs, tutorials, and DIY, creators or channels also upload short films, series, and classes that give an impression of ‘it’ being fun and not-so-boring! This is why Youtube is a search engine second to Google that drives more traffic to a website.
But what else do we need to know
Sean Si, an SEO Specialist, and a Blogger helps us to categorize Youtube SEO into two categories: Video Content and User Engagement.
Video Content is basically the Foundation of your Youtube SEO. It provides on-site optimization such as the relevance of your title, description, tags, transcription or subtitles, channel authority, and content.
On the other hand…
User Engagement refers to the views, inbound links, shares, embeds, comments, and reactions (or thumbs up and thumbs down) all given by your viewers.
Getting information about all of these will give you a head and will help you gather knowledge about Youtube SEO.
Basic Tips of Youtube SEO for Beginners
All according to SEO Specialists and Famous Content Creator and Blogger, Neil Patel, here are the steps that you follow to optimize results in your Youtube Channel.
TIP 1: Get more views for the first 24 hours of your Video.
Whether you’re new to Youtube or Not, do something that can help you boost your viewers for the first 24 hours you published your video. This is the time that Youtube will realize that “if this channel gets tons of views right after it was uploaded, then it must be relevant”.
Once you get plenty of views for your video (no particular number required) including the engagements such as comments and likes, the better it would rank in Youtube. And until Youtube’s algorithm doesn’t change, it will continually do better for the next several weeks, months, or even years.
But how are you gonna do that
Simple, encourage your viewers to turn on their ‘push notifications’ and have an ‘email blast’ ready to invite people to watch your new video. But if you’re new, try to put out catchy titles that people would love to click as youtube counts the click-through rate (CTR) and put it on your description box as well. You can also ask your viewers a question that would make them respond through the comment section, and invite them to subscribe to your channel.
It doesn’t seem easy for new channels, especially if they’re not famous in the media, but do everything you can to rank it higher on Youtube.
TIP 2: Produce Quality Content that people would love!
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, only upload quality content, both for written and in the video. If you know that people would search for this specific topic, then do it! Create something out of it. Because if none of this is in your, let’s say, ‘video’ then it’s all for nothing! Why would you want to spend time, money, and effort in creating content that people don’t care about?
It goes the same to the videos that people hate. Avoid the mentality that if people hate it, they would get curious, click on it, comment, it would still rank higher! This can be true but sooner or later, it would not only affect the way you think about yourself and the world, but it could also be the key to your downfall.
We want people to know that we are creative, fun, and intelligent creators that can relate to other people, and have the motivation to help others as well. So the longer videos you upload, it means there are plenty of key points and information to get from your video. In effect, people would always try to click on it.
But remember, don’t let them get bored while watching the introduction or few minutes of your video as they can quit and close your window.
TIP 3: Transcribe your Youtube Videos
Yes, it’s true that when people turn on their captions, Youtube already puts on an SRT file automatically. But it also creates lots of errors and unorganized thoughts, that people may find annoying. Only about 70% of the auto-caption is accurate.
If your viewers wanted to take down notes or to clearly understand what were you saying, give them what they want. Upload SRT Files automatically or you use the help of another website who can transcribe it for you.
Who knows, you can even upload a written article just by using your transcribed files.
TIP 4: Upload Subtitles in different languages
I think we can all relate to the fact that if a certain video we watched if, from a foreign language, we wanted to understand what they’re saying! We can look so dumb laughing at the vide not even understanding what are they’re saying.
We want foreigners or international viewers to get something out of our videos. Whether ideas, knowledge, or fun moments, we want them to enjoy what we provide. This can also help you gather more keywords that drive more traffic in your videos. And the more words there are in your description box, the more chances of ranking.
So go ahead and add subtitles or SubRip (SRT) files on your video. You can ask your employees to do it for you manually or you can allow your subscribers to add them for you. For the latter, it would be easier and it would create more engagement between your viewers and your channel.
TIP 5: Say your SEO Keywords many times!
You read it right. For other search engines that show written articles and blogs, they have to keep repeating the SEO keywords for the whole content. But on Youtube, videos are the main focus. And it is said that there are times where Youtube Management decides on their own as to what could be helpful and relevant and what’s not. They can decipher keywords from your videos.
A little pro tip, mention your keywords in the first half (even in the introductory part) of your video. This would help Youtube to hear your thoughts about a certain topic and keyword.
Repeating your SEO Keywords in your videos gets more chances of ranking! You can make use of the results from the search bar to see what do people usually look for. You can also use ‘Ubersuggest’ to type the keywords that you wanted to focus on and see their rankings.
After getting through all of these tips, we hope that you can make use of these in the near future, especially when you’re trying to create your step in the Youtube SEO. One thing that you can do is to share or embed files to other websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and many more, that would help you increase your engagement with other online users.
Always remember to follow Youtube SEO basics provided above, create Quality Content and be consistent! We know this because we too give the same response to other Youtube Channels. And we’d also like you to succeed in this process.
